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The following code throws an error.
\documentclass{amsart}
\usepackage{accents}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usepackage{soul}
\def\ubar#1{\underaccent{\bar}{#1}}
\begin{document}
$\ubar{x}$
\hl{$\bar{x}$}
\hl{$\ubar{x}$}
\end{document}
If the line \hl{$\bar{x}$} is commented out, it runs fine, isolating the problem to be with the interaction between the \hl command and the \ubar command. Is there an easy workaround for this?
As a variant of §22 of the soul documentation, you can put the content in a savebox before highlighting/underlining it. This means that linebreaks will not work but otherwise it works fine.
MWE, showing a manual savebox and a new command \hlu that performs the box operations:
\documentclass{amsart}
\usepackage{accents}
\usepackage{soul}
\newsavebox{\ubarbox}
\def\ubar#1{\underaccent{\bar}{#1}}
\def\hlu#1{\savebox{\ubarbox}{#1}\hl{{\usebox\ubarbox}}}
\begin{document}
\savebox{\ubarbox}{$\ubar{x}$}
\noindent ubar: $\ubar{x}$\\
hl bar: \hl{$\bar{x}$}\\
hl usebox: \hl{abc {\usebox\ubarbox}}\\
hlu: \hlu{$\ubar{x}$}\\
\end{document}
Result:
\ubar in advance so that I can use the macro ubar both with and without the hl command. I tried this: \def\ubar#1{\savebox{\ubarbox}{$\underaccent{\bar}{#1}$}} but it doesn't work, i.e., both \ubar{x} and \hl{\ubar{x}} return blanks. Could you suggest how to do this. please? Thanks for all your help
Sep 30, 2019 at 3:09
\underaccent and \hl do all kinds of redefinitions and substitutions when executing the command. This causes some interference which leads to the error that you encountered. A solution is to 'shield' the commands from eachother by using the savebox. This works by keeping the \underaccent command outside of the argument of the \hl, in my definition of \hlu the accent is in #1 and processing that is finished and stored in the box before \hl starts. With \hl{\ubar{x}} as you suggest the accent is back in the argument of \hl [...]
\hlu command however works the same as \hl (only without line breaking), so whenever you want to highlight something that contains an underbar somewhere you can use \hlu and in other cases you can use \hl. Or if you do want line breaking for a line that contains an underbar you can put the underbar part in a savebox and use \hl as normal, as shown in my 'hl usebox' example.
tikzdo with that? It does not run through regardless of whether or not one loadstikz.ubar{x}command is highlighted instead of being underlined.